r/technology • u/Dilpickle2113 • 10h ago

Social Media YouTube is testing hiding the dislike button entirely and users aren’t happy

https://www.dexerto.com/youtube/youtube-is-testing-hiding-the-dislike-button-entirely-and-users-arent-happy-3420822/
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261

u/zrad603 9h ago

I can't believe YouTube doesn't have a "block channel" feature. I'm sick of accidentally clicking on the same clickbait AI generated YouTube channels.

101

u/InevitableAvalanche 8h ago

All these social media sites are about controlling what you think, not giving you what you want.

6

u/ruggnuget 8h ago

Hard disagree. Its about keeping you watching. If you watch more because you are angry then angry topics will get promoted. As long as you arent gaining class consciousness they dont care about what side of whatever hot button topic is popular. As long as you keep watching.

13

u/zrad603 8h ago

they just want eyeballs on ads, but advertisers probably don't want to pay for ads on AI slop.

3

u/InevitableAvalanche 3h ago

Nah, they also want to shape your opinion.

2

u/racksy 1h ago

they want both.

they want to control your window to the world and also for you to click on ads.

3

u/E_Dward 8h ago

They exploit our brains reward systems by only occasionally showing us what we want, that way we get a bigger dopamine hit when we finally see something we're interested in. It's exactly the same principle behind slot machines.

15

u/turtlemick 8h ago

Make sure to also remove the video(s) from watch history if you don’t do that already

8

u/zrad603 8h ago

I have watch history disabled.

20

u/GotSomeUpdogOnUrFace 8h ago

Having watch history disabled and not being logged in really shows you the bullshit that YouTube tries to force on you. When it doesn't know what to feed you, which is a lie cause it's still tracking you anyway, it genuinely tries to send me nonstop AI and propaganda videos. The only thing I ever search for is sports clips.

2

u/_le_slap 4h ago

Truly. All I care about is motorcycle and formula1 content. But if I'm not signed in it's either Mr Beast and Indian politics for some reason.

6

u/turtlemick 8h ago

I’ve personally kept my watch history to a select collection of channels; I haven’t seen any weird shit that youtube loves to recommend. Sometimes slips through, but my algorithm typically sticks to the group I normally watch. Completely up to you how you want your viewing experience though.

But yes, a block channel option would be nice to have.

1

u/RedAero 4h ago

You have no watch history, therefore you have no homepage; how exactly are you accidentally encountering random, AI generated videos? Do you just type something into the search bar and hope for the best?

Seriously, I'm not even trying to mock, I simply have no idea how you use YouTube if not through a) the Subscriptions feed, or b) the homepage with watch history.

43

u/Alaishana 8h ago

"Don't recommend channel'

That's not working for you?

54

u/jacomoncal 8h ago

Not the same as “block channel” though which is what they’re saying they want and I agree. I still get recommended content from channels I’ve marked not to recommend.

3

u/l8578zlxicv 8h ago

They have an AI button you can click at the bottom of AI videos and disable it for teenagers in Australia.

I would love the ability to block all AI videos. But of course that’s not an option

8

u/mddesigner 8h ago

I want to see adult content without ai
Pretending to be a teen is hardly a solution

8

u/seriouslees 7h ago

I have never a single time been recommended a video from a channel I have chosen "Don't recommend channel" for.

Are you sure it was recommended or were you looking on the Search page?

3

u/scannererwe 5h ago

Same. "Don't recommend" lasts for about a week. Maybe two.

1

u/slicer4ever 7h ago

That's weird, i've never seen a channel i marked don't recommend appear in my feed again.

42

u/Radiant_Safe1228 8h ago

It does not. It's another button that doesn't do anything.

It needs a flat out block channel feature. As it completely and forever. Not just until they need to push you that channel again. 

I doubt it'll ever happen because if it does the current trending bullshit will probably collapse.

5

u/ElectricGhostMan 8h ago

that makes sense. I felt like every few months a channel i'd "do not recommend" would magically come back but I always assumed it was a different channel with a similar name. Now I know it's the same channel and YT's new awful ux got me to forget.

1

u/ROKIT-88 5h ago

It seemed like it used to work for about 6 months, then you'd have to block it again - which is annoying but I could live with it. Recently though it doesn't seem to work at all.

4

u/Banndrell 7h ago

I use the BlockTube extension/addon. Works wonders.

1

u/Radiant_Safe1228 7h ago

I'll try that thanks.

1

u/ROKIT-88 5h ago

I watch as much on my tv as on devices, so unfortunately that doesn't work.

8

u/Responsible-Tap-3748 7h ago

It works when I use it

3

u/seriouslees 7h ago

It works perfectly fine for me.

3

u/Alstorp 7h ago

I've never had that not work. I've blocked many large very popular channels that gets force-fed to you and never have them show up ever again

1

u/Amalo 3h ago

Don’t recommend channel removes it completely from your suggestions. Have you thought about deleting your complete watch history?

1

u/Radiant_Safe1228 2h ago

I have. I tried everything. there are 3 channels I've tried for years to get it not to recommend. Wranglerstar, this weird Mormon family channel, and ave. 

It still recommends them after literally clicking do not recommend dozens if not 100+ times. I've cleared my history and everything. I have no subscriptions, I don't like it comment. 

Still non fucking stop

10

u/TheMayorMikeJackson 8h ago

That doesn’t work for search 

11

u/Linesey 8h ago

1: it doesn’t always display. (last three times I needed it it wasn’t available) 2: it doesn’t block, and the channel can still be recommended, it just (theoretically) makes it less likely.

I use YouTube for music videos a lot, including indie and cover artists, so YouTube has been trying to recommend AI music and covers, and it is incredibly frustrating not being able to completely block channels. there are like 3 that if blocked would solve 98% of the problem.

2

u/ROKIT-88 5h ago

I use it a lot for music videos too, but find it terrible for discovery of new artists/music. The problem is it will suggest a bunch of videos from artists I've never heard of - if I play one to see if I like it (which is maybe one out of ten at best) my feed will be filled with more videos from that artist for months, even when I dislike or say not interested. There's one artist I think I played the video ten years ago and still get recommended occasionally even though I've never played another video from them since.

1

u/[deleted] 8h ago

[deleted]

3

u/KindofFunctional 8h ago

It absolutely does not work for a lot people, including myself. Nobody is lying, dipshit.

2

u/ROKIT-88 5h ago

It worked for me up until a few weeks ago. I'm really active about curating my feed using the "don't recommend channel" and "not interested", as well as the shorts options they used to have (not interested originally 'snoozed' shorts for 30 days, then show less which worked but still left a bunch in my feed). In general this resulted in a reasonably good feed free of AI slop, shorts, popular garbage and rightwing nonsense. Then a few weeks ago my feed exploded with this stuff, as well as a ton of content in other languages that I don't speak and have never watched before. The feedback controls have stopped working, there are channels I've selected don't recommend a dozen times in the last week and multiple videos from that channel still show up in my feed. After navigating through their byzantine help until I got to a support chat, then got past the ai chat to a real person, they basically claimed nothing has changed on their end and that I should use the 'send feedback' option because that goes "straight to the engineers" - I've done that several times as well and there's no response or anything so it's apparently just shouting into the void.

2

u/anoldradical 8h ago

Just now realizing that I have finally successfully blocked Home Reno TV. God I hate that guy. I can't tell you how many times I clicked don't recommend channel but it always came back. Maybe it takes 74 times.

3

u/USA_A-OK 7h ago

I had the same experience with Linus Tech Tips. I don't want to see that dude ever again on my feed

1

u/SmegmaUnicorn 8h ago

…seriously?

1

u/Druber13 8h ago

It seems like it ads fuel to the fire and they give you more of it and content like it. I accidentally watched 1 Metallica video and my whole feed turned into it lol.

1

u/OPMajoradidas 8h ago

Thats a joke button. 😐 I only want human made.content. AI is bullshit.

1

u/Chomp545 7h ago

That option almost never shows up.

1

u/Probably_Not_A-Bot 6h ago

I stopped using YouTube a few years ago because it got to expensive and the free version had way too many ads but when I used to “Don’t recommend channel” didn’t do shit.

1

u/SlayerII 6h ago

No it doesn't really. nothing can fully block creators .

1

u/ICLazeru 5h ago

Nothing on YouTube works. The algorithm there is insane.

1

u/Alaishana 5h ago

REALLY odd.

It all works for me. I'm only seeing what I want to see. Blocked channels never show up again. I never get out of line suggestions.

No idea why my experience differs so much from many others here.

Firefox, youtube ad blocker, situated in NZ. Does any of this matter?

1

u/ICLazeru 5h ago

No idea. Channels I am subscribed to never send notifications, even when I click the bell. Blocking a channel does nothing, it'll be back tomorrow. If I watch one video on a topic, my feed instantly fills with 15 similar videos, even if I disliked it and have no further interest in it.

1

u/MetaPhalanges 3h ago

That won't stop them from showing up in the auto-play queue. Which pisses me the fuck off.

1

u/Alaishana 2h ago

Ah, ok.
I never use autoplay.
Just like I never listen to the radio or watch TV.
Not letting anyone else decide what enters my house and my mind.

1

u/Rassettaja 7h ago

It hides the channel for max a week, then it's back in ur recommendations 100% of the time

1

u/seriouslees 7h ago

Not for me it isn't. I have never seen a channel get a single video recommended after choosing that option. Not once.

Now if I specifically SEARCH for something, they might be in the search results, but thats me specifically requesting a thing, not youtube recommending it.

1

u/Rassettaja 4h ago

I've done it on dozens of channels I've never watched, and whos content I couldn't care less about, yet every time they end up back on my "for you/home" page anyways..

1

u/Alaishana 6h ago

Never noticed that.

Hmmm, odd.

3

u/Silver_Quail4018 8h ago

There are so many right now that if you block 1000 in a day you will get another 10000 to replace them, like a Hydra!

1

u/Phrosty12 1h ago

That's pretty much how it felt trying to block Blippi's channels from my kid's account. I eventually just said fuck it and deleted the whole app.

3

u/dbxp 8h ago

You can use the BlockTube browser extension

The reason they don't want such a thing though is that it limits their ability to push videos in your feed. They don't have control of the videos uploaded but do control the recommendations and search algorithm (really just a prompted recomendations engine) which is how they make their money.

2

u/krieglich 8h ago

You can go to the channel, "report" it and there you have the option to not show it, I always assumed that works kinda like blocking.

1

u/RedAero 4h ago

I don't use any recommendation algorithm on YouTube so I can neither confirm nor deny, but the way I was told - easily a decade ago now - to avoid political stuff on Facebook was to report all of it for some sort of heinous hate crime. To this day I have absolutely nothing political on my Facebook feed.

2

u/lostshell 8h ago

Yeah same. I have a browser extension to block channels. I should not need an extension to do basic functions on a site.

2

u/swiftandsevere 7h ago

the worst part is they used to… I remember being able to block on youtube as late as 2016

2

u/RedditSucksIWantSync 7h ago

Isn't that what the"don't recommend channel" button is for? Never saw a channel ever again after using that.. and you can still kinda block the channel on their user page too. The only real block only comes after reporting a channel for something iirc

2

u/VexingRaven 7h ago

Weird how many people claim to have so much AI generated clickbait on their YT, and yet mine is the same handful of edutainment channels and gamers I've always watched. Maybe people who always watch garbage on YT are the ones getting all the garbage now.

2

u/chef-nom-nom 7h ago

There's a "Don't recommend channel" feature... at least there is as I'm writing this.

On desktop, click a video's three dots (when seeing video thumbnails) to get a menu with the "Don't recommend channel" entry.

On mobile YT app, hold-press a video's thumbnail to get the menu where the "Don't recommend channel" entry is.

2

u/Banndrell 7h ago

BlockTube extension. It's been a lifesaver for me lately.

1

u/nx6 7h ago

I can't believe YouTube doesn't have a "block channel" feature.

SmartTube has an option like that. You can long-press on a video on the home page and tell it not to recommend you videos from the channel it's from. I assumed it was connecting to some YouTube feature but I guess not.

1

u/Alpha_Apeiron 4h ago

I'm so sick of searching for AngryJoeShow videos only to get vids from chuds using AI slop to make videos hating on him

1

u/CordobezEverdeen 4h ago

Add-on time.

1

u/WesternWitchy52 4h ago

It used to. They took that away too. You could block users. Now you have to hide channel which doesn't do much.

1

u/HuudaHarkiten 3h ago

I've been using FreeTube software, since google doesn't want me to log in to my account, FreeTube allows me to subscribe without having to log in. It also has a "hide channel" feature that actually works.

1

u/Drdonkeyballs 3h ago

Every time I pull up the YouTube app on my TV, the first video is another dumpster fire trailer from Angel Studios that I can't get rid of. Drives me insane.

1

u/MumrikDK 2h ago

I'm sick of accidentally clicking on the same clickbait AI generated YouTube channels.

There's a whole filter system to block those, in the style of adblocking.

I haven't messed with it on desktop where I only watch my subs, but it's built-in to alternative mobile apps like Morphe.

1

u/Whetherwax 1h ago

It does. Click the kebab icon (3 dots) next to the vid title and you can tell it not to show you that channel anymore.

1

u/beto832 9h ago

I like this idea. I can't stand those videos either

1

u/Sanquinity 8h ago

It has a "don't recommend channel" at least. It's not perfect but it's something...

0

u/Kingsmont 8h ago

But it does! You can tell YouTube not to recommend you a channel

0

u/_Big_____ 1h ago

What? It does have that.

I use it often and regularly